CD Baby artists earned over $100 million in 2018

January 15

	Independent artists worldwide are generating serious money for the music industry. According to last numbers provided by MIDiA Research, the total revenue generated by ‘self-releasing’ artists in 2018 was $643 million, with $171 millin more than in 2017. Indie distributor and publisher CD Baby announced this week that its member artists had earned "well over" $100 million dollars in 2018. Started as an online CD store in 1998, CD Baby now represents over 750,000 recording artists, 170,000 songwriters, and over 9m tracks across 800+ genres. “We believe that the independent share of the sound recording industry worldwide is growing faster than the industry overall,” said CD Baby CEO Tracy Maddux. How has CD Baby managed to contribute almost a sixth of these global indie-artist recorded music revenues? According to the company, it partly owes its success to “the under-monetization problem” – ie. artists who are not monetizing via all available platforms and avenues such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, publishing, sync and others. “We’re assisting songwriters who make original content to collect all their worldwide royalties with CD Baby Pro,” said Maddux. He added: “CD Baby has over 170,000 songwriters and 1.1 million songs in its publishing catalog for worldwide performance and mechanical collection. We make it easy for independent songwriters to collect ALL their money worldwide.” Source: www.billboard.com